SA-NUR, West Bank - She wears a red shirt and red crocheted hat, goes nicely with her long blond braid, stylish earrings, and big, blue eyes. Slender and tall, its hard to believe she's had six kids. Her jeans skirt touches the floor, just over her sandaled feet, as settler women are wont to dress.
She's 28, grew up in a Moscow refusenik family and immigrated to Israel with her family when she was 12, settling first in Jerusalem and afterwards in Gush Etzion, over the Green Line. When she got married, she moved to Kiriat Arba, next door to Hebron.
Her husband was an aide for Noam Arnon, the spokesman for the Jewish community of Hebron. Two years ago, they rented out their apartment in Kiriat Arba and moved to a godforsaken caravan in Sa-Nur, a tiny settlement in the northern West Bank now scheduled to be evacuated as part of the disengagement plan.
Chronic failure
As far as settlements go, Sa-Nur has been a chronic failure. They tried to bring Russian immigrant artists; they tried to bring Chabad. But when Miriam Adler arrived, there was only one permanent family there.
"I'm embarrassed to admit it," she says, "but the firset time we came here, we had to check where it was on the map. I'm sorry to say it, but northern Samaria has been neglected."
Winning the war
Now, with disengagement looming, the settlement has filled up once again. Some of the artists have returned, either for love of the land, or because they can smell the compensation payout for leaving.
New families have come, religious settler families, not to live but to protest. They have been placed in all types of tents: army tents, camping tents, tents meant to be used at the beach.
And this is only the beginning, of course. Everyone is promising it, threatening it. Everything happening now is merely a warm-up, an overture to the battles that will take place in August and September. "We will win the war," say the orange bumper sticker pasted on the inside of the tents. We will win the war.
I'm worried, I say.
"Don't be worried," says Adler. "No one here's got his head stuck in the sand. We have been stockpiling food and water, pasta and dried goods. If they put us under siege, we'll be okay."
"And if," she continues, "God forbid, we have to dig in here with force, we'll do that too."
Tent Theater
We sit, chatting, on plastic chairs under a huge net, surrounded by tents. Each tent is fitted with electricity; across the way are showers for men and women, portable toilets.
Across from us is the double tent belonging to the Sarel family. With ten children, they were granted a second tent.
"For the kids, this is a big adventure," says Adler. "They are learning to love the land of Israel. Just yesterday I watched my eight-year-old help someone set up a tent."
20,000 hands and feet
"In the summer, she says, "there will be 10,000 people here. At least. 10,000 people saying 'if you move me, it is as if you are cutting off my hand or my foot."
I say to her that if I were the army, I'd just get out of here and let them dehydrate. As opposed to the Gaza Strip, Israel is not getting totally out of the West Bank, only the settlements and army bases.
"We could wait, vacate the illegal outposts in the meanwhile, take away the soldiers protecting you," I say. "The thousands of protesters will wait a few days for the action, and then go home."
"If the army leaves, so be it," says Adler.
I ask if the disengagement has affected her relationship with the State of Israel. Her answer is prepared in advance.
"If saw an ugly painting in a museum with a beautiful frame, what would you do? Throw the whole thing out? Of course not. You'd chuck out the painting and keep the frame.
"We want a government, but we want a Jewish government. A government that gives our land away to the enemy is not really a Jewish government. We will fight the crime of withdrawal."
